Bulk micro-defects (BMDs) are intentionally formed within the substrate (e.g., wafers, such as silicon wafers) away from the active areas where transistors are formed to implement intrinsic gettering (IG) in substrates to reduce device leakage and associated device failures. BMD utilizes oxygen precipitation and bulk or oxidation stacking faults. In IG substrates, metallic impurities that would otherwise be at the substrate surface, and thus at or near pn junctions, can be substantially eliminated by gettering provided by the BMD which absorbs these impurities at positions at which device characteristics are not directly influenced by the BMD. It is thus possible to reduce the device failure caused by the generation of crystalline defects and the increase of pn junction leakage current due to metallic contamination, for instance.
Semiconductor processing, such as for forming analog ICs, generally requires high temperature furnace processing and Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) at temperatures up to about 1250° C. High temperature processing on any size wafer is a challenge for minimizing thermally induced crystalline slip and resulting dislocations, but is a greater challenge as the wafer diameter increases to ≧200 mm, such as 300 mm. The most common dislocation-induced failure mechanism is device leakage. Conventionally, furnace ramp-up and ramp-down rates are slowed in medium/high temperature furnace processing (e.g., 800 to 1150° C.) to minimize slip.